Aging gracefully: The story of my 103-year-old dad

It’s a bit hard to reach my 103-year-old father. Not that he’s doddering or anything. He’s just busy.

When I called him from the Fox London bureau at his home in Garden City, New York, he had just returned from his weekly Senior Knights of Columbus meeting, one of several activities of his week.

Now he’s on a “book tour” of sorts. Out next week, “Aging Gracefully,” a compilation of striking photographs and profiles of 52 centenarians around the world, by noted German photographer Karsten Thormaehlen.

Since then, dad‘s kept it up, living on his own, staying active with his own family and his girlfriend, Alice. He’s also stayed very much “plugged-in” to the 21st century via email, Facebook and even Twitter.

“The second 100 years is so much better,” he confided to me, “we had so little back then,” recalling his upbringing in Pittsburgh.

I asked photographer Thormaehlen what he learned from the centenarians he met with, from Japan to South America, from Italy to suburban Long Island America.

“They’re all the same,” he told me by phone from Germany. “They share the same secrets about living: generosity, humor, happiness, and being satisfied with what they’ve achieved.”